Saying I was blase today will likely not make me a popular person. But I was. It didn't feel like 9/11's tenth anniversary, it felt like Groundhog's Day. What I mean by that is I read the paper this morning and the articles, editorials were thus: "There Are Moderate Muslims," "America Unites," "Sports Help Healing," and John Kass' column, "America Needs to Not be Fearful" or some such garbage title. In short, it was nearly the same stuff I saw ten years ago in the paper. Kass' column floored me because I thought, "Really? Do we daily live our lives in fear?" No not really. This was a great boilerplate for 9/11/2001. But for 2011, it was such a lazy freaking article. After ten years, the best insight that fishwrap scribe can come up with is "Don't be afraid"? How John Kass still has a column is beyond my comprehension and I hope some day he has a congressional investigation so it will provide him more material to write about superfluous crap.
So yes, I was a little let down. It felt as if papers and news outlets went and said, let's grab what worked ten years ago. We have though, I hope moved beyond all these tropes. I guess not.
I also did not feel a great deal today because in the subsequent anniversaries, I had great conversations with my classes about the significance of 9/11, but after three years, my students were too young to really care. They suddenly didn't want to talk about it. Talking about it led to arguments about Iraq, insults to George Bush, and so on. So as they no longer cared because they did not want to cause unpleasantness, I guess I didn't either.
Then I saw the documentary on CBS tonight. It followed the Miracle House, a firehouse that lost none of it's members on 9/11, but are now seeing their heroes dying of cancer. I initially didn't want to watch it. Jets vs. Cowboys sounded better. But I made myself watch it, and it was very emotional. A flood of frustration rushed back as I was reminded of the 343 firefighters who stood in the towers, as police rushed out because the building would collapse, but because the police and fire were not on the same frequency (Thank you Rudy), the firefighters stood pat and refused to leave (because they had not heard the building would collapse), shepherding people out until the building collapsed. And then last year GOP members of Congress fought hard not to give benefits to those heroes.
The whole documentary brought back a rush of thoughts and memories. So here is my "Where were you?"
I was asleep. I got a call on my home phone. It was my friend John Popelka, a vet of the Afghan war (not then but since). John was screaming, "Luke, get your fucking ass up..." to which I ended listening to the message, thinking he was just trying to mess with me since I was living three hours behind him. Not long afterwards, Alette called me on my cell phone which was not yet a week old...I'd never had a cell phone before this. She told me a plane hit the World Trade Center. I told her that was no surprise. Planes fly close there. She then said, "No, another one hit, and another plane hit the Pentagon." At that point, I said, "It's bin Laden." ( It amazed me that the media had to explain who bin Laden was despite the fact that he was involved in the 93 bombing of the WTC and our embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. It was like he was completely off the radar for most Americans because he was the plucky little A-rab in a cave challenging our big bad power. But I knew back in 94 he was dangerous.) I jumped up and looked at the TV images through the snow; images provided by a makeshift antennae made from a coat hanger. The buildings were burning.
I burst into Paul's room, "Paul, the fucking trade centers got hit by a plane, so did the Pentagon." What I remember of all this was I could not stop smiling. This did then and still does sicken me. It was not as if I was happy, but the absurdity was not lost on me, and I could not make sense of it all. I was damn near hysterical.
We watched the buildings fall. Then I had to go to class. I called Arizona State to see if we had classes, and they said, "All classes are still scheduled." That cracked me up. My apartment and ASU were on the landing path for Sky Harbor Airport. And planes were still landing. But class is class. I had to go.
I went and our teacher was so flippant: "Well, bad things happen. That doesn't mean our plans change." In hindsight, I thank her for that attitude. It's rubbed off on me. After that, I went to playwriting workshop. Then I went and sat in front of a recruiting station for I don't know how many hours.
When I arrived at home, I had multiple missed calls from my dad. I called him back and his first words were, "I hope you didn't do something stupid and enlist." My dad is a career military man, and has a love of country I wish I could emulate. (This is not to say I don't love my country. I do, and I learned it from him, but as a son follows the father, I feel completely inadequate compared to Dad.) His objection was not based on joining, but rather, letting emotions get the best of me. To this day, I wish I had, especially given Pat Tillman...although maybe not.
And that's the essence of this 9/11 issue: Our passions and anger. As I heard in church today, forgiveness is exceptionally hard to enact. We offer forgiveness, hoping we get results/benefits, but the reality is that true forgiveness has no stings attached. Tough to do. Try it some time.
What it comes down to for me...my 9/11 story starts one month prior. I was working for damn near nothing at an Off-Broadway theatre all summer. My boss took mercy on me and tossed me some money to go see shows. I saw two, and planned on a third with my roommate, an interior designer. We went to the Trade Centers for the TKTS. It was closed. He insisted I go atop the trade centers. I'm not impressed by architecture, and I tried so hard to get out of going up top, insisting I'd be back following year. We went up, and it was AMAZING. It had a museum there about the building of the trade centers. From the observation deck, we saw all of Manhattan, and all the planes flying into Kennedy and La Guardia. They felt so close.
As we stood atop, I asked with my roommate, "Could you imagine being up top here, when the bomb went off back in the parking garage?" - a reference to the bombing in 1993.
He responded, "You wouldn't have felt it." I was shocked. "These buildings are meant to withstand a lot at their base," he explained. "To take it down from the base is worthless. If the buildings are to come down, they are designed to have charges at the mid to upper levels and let the weight from above take it down."
"How would you do that?" I asked out of curiosity.
"I have no idea," he said. We saw it less than a month later.
People I had met that summer did die. That's hard to swallow, but I offer this as hope or...well I don't know, but it's worth mentioning.
I spoke to my college friend Jill after the attacks. She said they tried to close their windows and keep the A/C on. They were not too far, and downwind, of ground zero. She told me, for a few weeks it smelled like burning flesh. However, the day of 9/11, her roommate and she were in an argument over bills or some such roommate dispute. Her roommate, Yael, was late for work, and she left with nothing resolved. She took the subway, stepped out, walked to work in time to see a plane hit the building she worked in.
Somehow, it never makes sense, but in that chaos, there seems to be order.
So as I started today with the blahs, I've suddenly, felt more inclined to reflect. We have since killed bin Laden, and I hope we celebrate less, and reflect on vengeance and forgiveness. Will we forget? No, never. But I hope we can move on as a nation to greater heights, true Christianity that so many conservative politicians espouse, but seem unwilling to practice, i.e. forgiveness, which then leads to growth. Sadly, if today's paper was any indication, we are still locked in the tired old slogans of unity and revenge and fear and trite acceptance, i.e. tolerance rather than acceptance, popular but unfounded ten years ago. I choose to move forward.
